A Terminal Termite Story

My books nearly got destroyed by termites. Who knew the home we built didn’t have permanent termite protection? It had only been eighteen years. Turned out we were supposed to retreat every five years. Oopsies.

These ravenous beasties came through a crack in the floor of the finished basement, and no joke, ate up through the bottoms of my precious oak book cabinets. Unnoticed, these busy little bookworms ate four shelves of books on the inside. Thankfully, all they got were some older Bible study books of my husband’s.

I brag we have the most theologically educated termites in Indiana.

My first books were Mother Goose Tales and a Bible storybook (I wore the cover off it). Both parents encouraged me to read, thereby starting a lifelong habit. An English teacher, my grandmother owned many wonderful tomes. I spent most Sunday afternoons tucked away on a daybed in her enclosed porch, never realizing until later that what I was reading were her textbooks!

My first job as a library page put our local library at my disposal. I raced through nearly every Nancy Drew mystery they had. The novel that most grabbed me though, was The Secret of the Samurai Sword by Phyllis A. Whitney. It inspired me to want to write. I devoured a whole new realm of thrillers and mysteries. While re-shelving, I ran across novels by Grace Livingston Hill, which introduced me to Christian fiction, followed by Janette Oke’s prairie romances.

New Reading Focus

By my freshman year of high school, becoming a doctor was a serious goal. My reading shifted to STEM subjects and making good grades. Fiction became a luxury. Of course, as a P.K., I read my Bible cover-to-cover more than any other book. I loved anything about the lands of the Bible, archaeology, and history. Whatever could feed my active imagination about the Bible, and help me teach younger children at church about God and Jesus.

Fiction became a needed escape during medical school. I’m proud to own a copy of James Herriott’s All Creatures Great and Small. I learned so much medicine from his books and laughed so hard at his funny stories. I mailed the book to England for him to sign. It returned, “To Ronda. Love, Prof. James Herriott.” It’s an inside joke—Herriott (AKA James Alfred Wight) was never a professor except maybe to me.

My current shelves carry Bibles, Christian nonfiction and fiction, and are weighted down with writing technique manuals and medical texts to help me answer other writer’s medical questions. On a higher note, I’m happy the termites didn’t reach my Charlton Heston-signed copy of Ben-Hur, nor my 1970s YA Star Trek book, signed by Lt. Uhuru.

That would have meant a flamethrower-level termite eradication, with me wielding the flamethrower.

Meet Ronda…

Physician, award-winning author, lifelong Hoosier, and preacher’s kid, Dr. Ronda Wells is a wife, mom, and grandma who puts faith and family first. She writes “heartfelt stories from the heartland” and is a Guideposts contributor. Her devotionals appear monthly on Crossmap’s “Daybreak Devotions and Nighttime Prayers” and Arise Daily. Learn more about Rond via her BRRC Profile page, or website.